The Road to Reform

High-stakes testing.  Charter schools.  Teacher tenure and seniority. Nowhere in the world of education is the debate louder or more heated than on the subject of school reform.

From New York’s rubber rooms to the Vergara v. California lawsuit, these issues are proving to be both polarizing and overtly political, often clouding any meaningful dialogue about approaches that might enrich learning in our schools and result in better educated children.

With this issue of Theory to Practice, we take on a broad, wide-ranging look at teachers unions, which are oft-blamed for the ills of public education.  Are teachers unions standing in the way of much-needed school reform, or are they simply easy targets when new efforts to improve educational systems sputter and stall? With unions playing a lot of defense these days, it’s important to take a step back to examine not only why teachers unions came into being but why they are targets now.
 
As we look for common ground among those on all sides of the issues, Lehigh’s College of Education will welcome Dr. Diane Ravitch to the campus in February 2015.
Ravitch, an educational policy analyst who has served the first Bush and Clinton administrations, is a leading voice in the national debate on school reform. Her talk, “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools,” will likely prove provocative as we weigh what is at stake for our children, who have the most to lose in this debate.
  
In this issue, we also look at the controversial practice of seclusion and restraints, in which students with behavior problems are isolated from others in their schools or even physically restrained. Some members of Congress are trying to severely curtail the use of restraints as well as bar the use of seclusion rooms. That’s what the Centennial School, which is governed by Lehigh’s College of Education, did more than a decade ago under the leadership of Director Michael George. 

Rounding out the issue are articles on the research and global work of the College of Education’s scholars, interns and graduate students.

As this issue shows, we are committed to addressing major educational challenges in our back yard and abroad. We hope you enjoy this issue of Theory to Practice.

Gary Sasso
Dean of the College of Education
Lehigh University